Chapter 144
When Wen Qian woke up in the morning, she looked outside and found it was foggy with very low visibility.
Due to the cessation of industrialization worldwide, there was no more smog, so after the fog cleared, it should be a sunny day.
Not only was there no smog, but there was also no light pollution here, so after the volcanic ash and aerosols in the stratosphere were cleared, Wen Qian could gradually see many stars.
With the help of relevant star charts, she could recognize various constellations.
This was something she couldn't see in the city back then, and only in her hometown in An Province before the volcanic eruption, and the sparsely populated Xia Province could she see the twinkling stars.
After finishing breakfast, she took out the soaked beans from the day before and placed them in the hallway, then took out the stone mill, preparing to grind the beans.
This time, she was going to make thousandfold tofu, and since it was meant for winter storage, she needed a larger quantity.
After grinding all the beans at once, she tried experimenting with how to add gypsum water to coagulate the sofu.
This crucial step was something she had never done herself before, but once she got it right, whether she made tofu, thousandfold tofu, or other bean products next was up to her.
Fortunately, after a few tries, she finally found the method.
On the second day, she started boiling a large pot for mass production.
She had ready-made molds and pre-processed thin cotton cloth.
At noon, the coagulated sofu was scooped up, and she began making the first batch of tofu, wrapping it in cloth with a cover on top, and pressing it with a smooth, large stone.
After the water had dripped off sufficiently, the tofu was pressed.
No wonder thousandfold tofu was a bit more expensive than regular tofu, as its production process was slightly more complex, especially due to the cost of cloth.
And at first, she didn't have a good grasp of the right amount for making one sheet of thousandfold tofu, so the initial sheets were thicker, but it didn't matter whether they were thick or thin since she could eat them all without wasting.
Later on, she got the hang of the proportions, so her temporary tofu workshop produced good results.
After the products were made, she stored them in her spatial storage, able to take them out whenever she wanted to eat them.
In the meantime, she didn't forget to save some sofu dregs, which tasted especially good with added sugar.
As for the sofu dregs styles from other places, whether savory or spicy, she wanted to try them all, so she saved quite a lot.
With the weather turning colder, it was now a good time to make fermented tofu.
Wen Qian cut the tofu into small pieces and placed them on a steaming tray, covering them with a lid to allow fermentation.
After a few days, a grayish-white fuzzy substance would grow on top, indicating it was ready, though if something else grew, Wen Qian wouldn't dare eat it.
Actually, it was best to eat things fresh, but Wen Qian felt she should master some skills she hadn't learned before.
So she wanted to try everything, since she had been alone for such a long time.
She always wanted to add more variety, as each new dish brought her happiness.
It took three or four days to finish making tofu, and to be honest, her arms were sore from constantly grinding.
Next, she would go collect the last batch of firewood, hopefully enough to pile up as much as possible in her courtyard.
Before the first frost hit, Wen Qian stored all the neatly arranged cabbages from her yard in her spatial storage.
In the north, whether radishes or cabbages, they were usually stored in cellars, but digging a cellar was not on her agenda for this year, so she planned to do it slowly next year herself.
She had also planned to build an oven outside her house door, but that didn't happen either, so it was pushed to next year as well.
With all the crops from the field stored away, Wen Qian cut down some trees and stored them in her spatial storage, then brought them back home and piled them in the yard, to be slowly sawed and chopped later.
The fermented tofu she had made earlier was ready, with the grayish-white mold looking very good. She added a bit of rice wine, chili powder, and salt, then put it in a jar with some oil poured on top.
Of course, she had other ways of eating it, such as pouring hot oil, chili, and salt over it, then steaming it in a pot.
The pickled vegetables she had made initially turned out very well, and she still took some out from time to time to whet her appetite.
Frost started to hit outside, and with each frost, the surrounding trees changed color a bit more.
The colors of autumn were more vibrant than those of spring and summer.
Before she knew it, the surrounding deciduous forests were all bare, and winter had arrived.
The winters here were rather long, so Wen Qian only planned to keep three rabbits over the winter, killing the rest for meat.
Since there were many rabbits, she saved the rabbit heads specifically to make braised rabbit heads.
And this time, she also removed and saved the rabbit skins to try making leather.
In the future, she planned to make leather from other game animals as well, so she wanted to practice with the rabbit skins first.
As for the other three rabbits, she housed them in the kitchen, near the back wall close to the heated kang bed area, making a cage for them.
If they could survive the winter, great, if not, then so be it. She could catch young rabbits again next year.
After all, rabbits reproduced quickly, so she didn't need to keep so many for the winter, which would require preparing a large amount of fodder as well.
This year's harvest was plentiful, with many smoked and cured meats hanging in the storage room.
Since she had spatial storage, for meats she didn't like smoked, she would just clean and store the game she caught in her spatial storage when the weather was hot.
Then, when it got cold, she would take them out to make cured meats.
She would weigh the meat, then measure out the corresponding amount of salt, rub the salt on, and place it in a large barrel to cure.
After that, she would turn it over a few times, and once it was adequately seasoned, take it out and string it up on bamboo poles.
After sun-drying it in the courtyard for a few days, it would be ready.
Winter came early here, so she had to sun-dry the meats early, otherwise, if winter arrived and they froze, they would become frozen meat instead of cured meat.
While the meats were sun-drying, she would kill the large fish she had caught by the river and string them up with ropes.
She would then bring them home, salt-cure them, and later hang them to make cured fish.
When the fish had just been hung to dry, she could pan-fry them with sticky rice cakes, which had a different texture from the fully cured fish that had been hung for a long time and became clusters.
If she wanted to eat them fresh, it was even easier - she just kept them in her spatial storage and took them out whenever she wanted to cook them, including any pre-cooked dishes.
Once the meats had dried to a certain extent, she would hang them all in the storage room.
Looking at the large and small chunks of meat hanging overhead, Wen Qian felt an immense sense of security.
After Wen Qian had stored all the food and firewood in her home, she could still hear gunshots in the distance.
It seemed her neighbors were still hunting, but that was understandable. Their arrival here meant they hadn't been growing crops.
With the additional time spent building houses, they would need to prepare more stored meat to get through the winter.
Wen Qian looked towards her distant neighbors, rarely even seeing children, so they must have been busy preparing for winter too.
Her neighbors were indeed busy preparing for winter, with adults and children alike foraging for food.
They had dug a cellar, so the cabbages, radishes, and other vegetables they had planted earlier were stored there. But the main crops that would help them survive the winter were cabbages and radishes, which were saved for last.
The grandmother was pickling sour cabbage, while the husband and wife were out hunting.
The old lady regularly took the two children to check the traps they had set in the vicinity.
They had smoked the prey they had caught earlier into cured meat, and were now hanging salted meat.
The two families were engaged in similar activities.
Since there were many leftover materials from house construction that could be used as firewood, coupled with the two children gathering sticks here and there, they had already stacked two fairly large piles of firewood near their home. At the very least, they didn't have to worry about running out of firewood for the winter.
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